Granite Systems Inc., a New Hampshire-based provider of network configuration management solutions for the telecom industry, and Lucent Technologies Inc. announced a global alliance that will allow Lucent to offer Granite’s Xpercom product to its customers.
Xpercom is an inventory management software system that provides configuration data on sites, equipment, circuit segments, circuit paths and cable. Lucent will incorporate Xpercom into its OneVision management systems architecture.
Mike Decelle, vice president of global market development for Lucent, said the company sought out a product to fill a physical resources management function in its OneVision management systems portfolio.
“We have a substantial software business within Lucent, but we don’t believe we have to develop all of our capabilities organically,” he said.
“Xpercom, combined with Lucent’s OneVision management system portfolio, provides flow-through provisioning and accurate network data synchronization for complex multidomain, multivendor networks,” said Decelle. “The addition of Xpercom expands and enhances the Communications Software Physical Resource Management solution, further extending our flexible suite of products for meeting the needs of network operators.”
“From our perspective, this validates our strategy and assumptions about how the (operations support system) market would evolve,” said Jay Borden, president and chief executive officer of Granite. “We’ve focused on solving a narrow set of problems and solving it completely.”
Borden said his company believes eventually pre-integrated suites of products will include best-of-breed contributions from a variety of companies.
“This combination provides a depth of functionality not yet seen in the industry, spanning all aspects of engineering, operations and provisioning,” said Borden. “Engineering and provisioning processes that once took weeks can now be done in hours.”
Granite has about 20 customers, including wireless carriers, local exchange carriers and emerging competitive local exchange carriers. The agreement with Lucent, which is non-exclusive, is the first the company has signed to include Xpercom in a comprehensive product suite like Lucent’s OneVision, said Borden.
